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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26545024">He is Coerced to Look</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/androktasia/pseuds/androktasia'>androktasia</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Who (2005)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Music, a DUET!!!!, me: sobbing and holding my masters degree - it's a METAPHOR guys, missy and her piano, the doctor and his guitar</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 07:28:56</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,628</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26545024</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/androktasia/pseuds/androktasia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>One day out of thousands, they can come together in the Vault and create something beautiful.</p><p>--</p><p>“Did you like it?” Missy asked.</p><p>“More of a Rachmaninoff guy myself, actually,” the Doctor said.</p><p>She twisted her head at this, fixing her gaze at him. “I don’t have the handspan for that these days and you know it.”</p><p>“Well maybe you should have thought about that when you regenerated.”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Twelfth Doctor &amp; Nardole, Twelfth Doctor/Missy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>38</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>He is Coerced to Look</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/notjodieyet/gifts">notjodieyet</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for Quinn, who is turning an age today! Happy birthday!</p><p>Title taken from (and story inspired by) the second track of Philip Glass’s <i>Descent Into the Maelstrom</i>.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Nardole was a tiresome creature, the Doctor thought. How supremely irritating that he had ever been convinced to bring him along for this secondment. </p><p>He ground his teeth together as Nardole droned on about such banal grievances as the inadequate tea and coffee served in the faculty lounge, the student who’d had a book Nardole wanted to read checked out of the library for three weeks, the meeting he’d gone to that had lasted for two hours but only actually had fifteen minutes of content – </p><p>“Wait,” the Doctor interrupted. “Why were you at a meeting? You don’t have a job.” He frowned, and berated himself for asking. “Actually, I don’t care.”</p><p>Nardole puffed himself up. “Excuse me, sir, but I think you’ll find that I have a <em> very </em>important function at this university.” He had his fingers wrapped around a steaming cup of tea, and took a placid sip. “I’m practically the only person keeping the place running.” </p><p>“You’ve started a black market of textbooks and now everyone’s too afraid of you to make you leave.” The Doctor raised an eyebrow at him. “Except me. Go away.”</p><p>Nardole stayed resolutely sat. “I wanted to talk to you about something actually. Something important.”</p><p>The Doctor groaned, and dropped his head to his desk. There was a piece of paper burning a hole in his pocket from his visit to the Vault last night, which he had dutifully ignored all through the night, and then ignored some more as he delivered increasingly incomprehensible lectures to increasingly bewildered students (although they should be used to that by this point; if they’d wanted boring lectures that followed the course structure they were given at the beginning of the semester, they could have taken Professor Benziger’s module), through his tutoring session with Bill (where she had made some actually very insightful arguments about Hesiod’s <em> Works and Days </em>which, looking back, he hadn’t given their due credit), and also one really dull faculty meeting (wait – was that the one Nardole had been to? He didn’t remember seeing his round little face, but he paid such little attention at these things…) </p><p>Nardole hadn’t noticed or didn’t care about the Doctor’s inattention. He just kept blabbering on.</p><p>“I need some repairs doing to my head I think, sir,” he was saying. “My right eye keeps glitching.”</p><p>“You’re fine,” the Doctor grunted. “Everyone’s eye does that.”</p><p>“It keeps zooming in on things,” Nardole protested.</p><p>“Yes, everyone’s does that.”</p><p>He chuffed. “Well it didn’t use to.”</p><p>The Doctor lifted his head again, pinning Nardole with an icy stare. “It was broken before. Now it’s fixed.” He raised his arms. “You should be grateful! Now go away.”</p><p>Nardole stood, scuffing his feet on the floor. “I’m just saying, sir, it’s negatively impacting my ability to perform my duties. I think you have a responsibility as my employer to provide me with a safe working environment.”</p><p>“You’re not my employee, you’re my babysitter,” the Doctor said. “Now run along and get me some hot milk. I imagine it might take you a while – I want it fresh from the cow.”</p><p>Nardole rolled his eyes and shuffled off, muttering about the environmental impact of cattle farming and offering several suggestions for dairy-free alternatives such as oat or soy, but eventually he clicked the door shut behind him.</p><p>The Doctor leant back in his chair. “Blessed silence,” he murmured to the room. He gave himself a moment, and carefully removed the slip of paper from his pocket, laying it on his desk precisely. It was made of a heavy cream stock, and was folded into crisp quarters. </p><p>He didn’t open it.</p><p>Instead he stared at the photos of River and Susan on his desk, thinking about them, his hearts burning. He thought about Bill’s wide, easy smile, and about Clara – whose face was a mystery, but who he could see the outline of in his memories, by her absences, feeling all at once the inexplicable grief he had for a woman he couldn’t even remember. He thought about all the brilliant, shining friends he’d had who weren’t also unrepentant murderers.</p><p>Well – he flicked his eyes back to River’s picture ruefully.</p><p>Making his mind up, he picked up the paper and opened it with two swift movements. He scanned his eyes over the contents, and folded it up again.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>The Doctor slipped quietly into the Vault. Missy was sat at the piano with her back to him, playing something minimalist and aching, each stroke of the keys a sound like glass shattering. She finished with one final contemplative note, but didn’t turn around.</p><p>“Did you like it?” she asked.</p><p>“More of a Rachmaninoff guy myself, actually,” the Doctor said.</p><p>She twisted her head at this, fixing her gaze at him. “I don’t have the handspan for that these days and you know it.”</p><p>“Well maybe you should have thought about that when you regenerated,” he said, resting his guitar against the wall. </p><p>She hummed. “Look at you,” she said. “All ruffled up. Bad day?” She turned her mouth down in exaggerated pout.</p><p>He quirked a lip, but didn’t say anything, just leant himself against the wall of the Vault, observing her again. He dropped her note on the floor and she didn’t flinch, didn’t even flick her eyes to it, but her smile grew and she bared her teeth. She stood, leaning on the edge of the piano, cocking her hip.</p><p>“You read it then?”</p><p>“I looked at it.”</p><p>She raised her eyebrows. “Memorised it?”</p><p>The Doctor dropped his eyes down to the discarded note, filled with lines of sheet music which she had carefully transcribed by hand. “I’ve an idea of the general structure.” </p><p>“So you’re going to improvise then,” she said, pursing her lips, looking quite unimpressed. </p><p>He shrugged. “I know your part. I’ll work out what my part is as we go along.”</p><p>“It has to be perfect or it’s not worth doing.”</p><p>He looked down, smiling, shaking his head. “No, Missy.”</p><p>“You always tell me no.”</p><p>He pushed off the wall, plugging in his guitar. “Perfection isn’t the point.”</p><p>“You?” she scoffed. “You’re trying to tell <em> me </em>what the point of music is?” She affected a broad American accent. “‘Mr Sonic-Sunglasses-Magician-Coat-Electric-Guitar’?” </p><p>“The art of music is in its creation,” he said softly. “Not a final product. It’s a fundamentally different art to all the others – painting, architecture, paleontology.” He smiled. “It’s ephemeral; it happens and then it disappears. There’s no point trying to make it perfect. Just let the joy come from the act of making.”</p><p>Missy eyed him for a long moment before darting her head away. “Yuck,” she said. “Let’s just do this thing.” She slipped off her boots.</p><p>He was coerced to look, just for a second, at her fine bones and delicate ankles. Realising what he was doing, he jerked his head away. It was just – she was always so trussed up that, when her hair was loose or her sleeves rolled up or, yes, her shoes were off, it felt like he was being invited in. Like she was peeling back the curtains, baring her belly. </p><p>She caught him staring. “I like to really<em> feel </em>the pedals,” she said, giving him a wicked smile and wiggling her toes. </p><p>He strummed a chord. “C sharp minor, right?”</p><p>She harrumphed. “Did you read it at all?” But she laid out a tinkling scale, matching his, and they were off. </p><p>Missy started them off with the melody she had composed - delicate chromatics in her right hand, undulating chord progressions in the left - and the Doctor matched it with low, quiet key notes, letting her take the lead. As he got into it, he walked around to the side of the piano. She met his eyes and frissons trembled down his spine. </p><p>Without warning, she transitioned into crashing, dissonant chords, lurching, trying to throw him off. He didn’t let her. He clung on, a melody escaping through his fingers, lingering high above her. They changed key and she introduced a new rhythm, testing him. After listening to her for a moment, he matched it and they raced through, chasing one another, each fighting for control of the harmony, neither willing to concede to the other.</p><p>Oh, and now the recapitulation. Missy brought back the melody from the beginning, but it was different – slower, the chromatics darker, the chords placed heavy and low underneath. He contrasted this with a light counterpoint high on the fretboard, and as they drew to a close, with only a wee bit of spite, he changed her melancholy ending, adding a light major third above her contemplative tonic.</p><p>She glared at him, but he ignored her. He lifted the strap over his neck and put the guitar down.</p><p>“Well, wasn’t that lovely,” Missy said with a sing-song voice. “Lovely and <em> ephemeral.</em>”</p><p>He eyed her. “Yes,” he said. “It’s beautiful in the moment, and then it ends. You can accept its beauty while it happens, and remember it once it’s gone.”</p><p>She stood up and joined him, rising up on her tiptoes. “Or you could just play it again,” she said huskily. </p><p>“That too.”</p><p>She pressed a quick kiss to his lips. “You’ll be off now then, I suppose.”</p><p>“I suppose.”</p><p>She waltzed away and flung herself into an armchair, crossing one leg over the other. “Give my love to Thing One and Thing Two.” The Doctor entertained himself for a moment, imagining telling Nardole, <em>‘Missy sends her love,’ </em>and the ordeal that would follow. He unplugged his guitar.</p><p>“I’ll see you tomorrow.”</p><p>“Will you?” Missy said, examining her nails. “I’m sure it will be beautiful.”</p><p>He averted his eyes and picked his guitar up by its neck. “Me too,” he said quietly, and left.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Bill and Nardole pressing their ears against the door of the Vault</p><p>Bill: It sounds... awful<br/>Nardole: Is this jazz?<br/>Bill: I don't even know if it's <i>music</i></p><p>--</p><p>Thanks for reading!</p><p>You can find me on tumblr at <a href="https://petercapaldish.tumblr.com/">petercapaldish</a>, if you like.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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